[Locked] Matchmaking Feedback Update – October 9

343 Industries

If you assume a to4 diamond can play more like onyx’s and because of that, a to4 diamonds has to play against a to4 random onyx’s, they are going to get smoked.

this new system probably works decent for the silver vs gold level of players but a to4 low level onyx players will get stomped by a to4 random champs.

It’s fine in social modes. I just don’t want to see it in ranked play.

I don't really have an opinion about whether this feature should be in ranked or not. I'm personally fine with teams having an advantage over solo players in Ranked. Use your main account for your team play, and make an alt account to play as your solo ranked account - that simple. But I also don't think it would break the ranked playlists to include this adjustment. It would in theory just make the ranks more accurate...?

I THINK Josh previously said that the MMR team adjustment would be used for choosing balanced/fair matches, but NOT for computing CSR adjustments after the match, so you would still gain a lot of CSR if you beat a team of solo onyx players while running a To4 mid-diamonds. In other words, it would still be in your interest to roll with a team if you want to rank up. (Josh, please correct me if I'm wrong there). I personally think that's the best way - it rewards you with rank improvements if you can play effectively as a team, but doesn't give you hopeless matches if you're a solo player.

In any case, for social playlists I think the team MMR adjustment factor would be quite helpful.

Yes, keeping in mind this feature is not out yet.

But when it is, when we match solo Onyx players with a to4 Diamonds, the Onyx player Ranks will go up / down as if they played against players with Onyx MMR.

Also, as you've said, this is a better experience for the to4 Diamond players, because they Rank up faster by playing better teams with an equal win%.

Otherwise, they are stuck playing random Diamonds and getting less for a win, and losing more for a loss.

So, if possible, it's in the best interests of the to4 to play either solo Onyx players, or play against other Diamond to4's who will "look" to the ranking system as if they are Onyx, and they'll get more Rank for it.

So better for both matchmaking and Ranking really.

In today's world, if we were to just only match to4 vs. to4, then you get the opposite.

You get Diamond players who actually play like Onyx, but are stuck in Diamond because Diamond goes 50/50 vs. Diamond. You have solo Diamond players at the same Rank who are definitely worse than these to4 Diamonds, but since they never play each other, we never know.

Meanwhile, you have solo Onyx players who aren't any better than the to4 Diamonds, but get to be Onyx because they are beating solo Onyx players.

So if we segment out Fireteams, they actually end up with WORSE Ranks in the end than Solo players.

ODST - Bronze

How does matchmaking work for 343 unicorn skin play dates? Are skill and fire team size restrictions removed so everyone has a fair chance?

No, if I'm being honest, those restrictions are not removed and, yes, that does make it harder to get the unicorn.

I've always wondered if 343i strictly has one team group playing with the community or if there possibly are a handful of groups playing and interacting with the community during these play dates? It would make some sense to put together a few skill ranged teams such as a Pro level team, a Silver-Gold level team, and a Plat-Diamond level team in order to reach more more of the player base, but I suppose part of that has to do with who can be made available within the company to participate and of course their skill levels with playing the game; plus, you guys are certainly a busy group juggling all that you have on your plate, so easier said than done I imagine.

Monitor

Again, just because a to4 diamonds can beat random onyx’s doesn’t mean you need balance that out. It means it’s working. You’re trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. You’re so hell bent on achieving close to a 50/50 win rate that your blind to the game and how it should work. Teams should beat randoms. Stop trying To “fix” that.

In the future please refrain from posting multiple times in a row. You can use the edit button if you want to add more information to a post and respond to more than one person in a single post.

Spartan - Silver

If solo players are the majority of your population and your game is team based, solve that problem.

There is already a solution for that problem and it's called hard party restrictions which doesn't allow parties to match solo players, but you can't do that in this game because of the population issues so there has to be compromises.

343 Industries

If solo players are the majority of your population and your game is team based, solve that problem.

There is already a solution for that problem and it's called hard party restrictions which doesn't allow parties to match solo players, but you can't do that in this game because of the population issues so there has to be compromises.

Recruit - Bronze

This is so painfully obvious, I can’t figure out why someone as smart as Menke is overlooking the obvious. Take 4 randoms with coms and put them against a to4 with the same rank and see if it’s still 99:1.

I think your over reacting on this. Ive read a few of your posts here and you have to understand that solo players are the foundation to Halo. Its been that way since dirt was on this planet. Lets just see how this plays out.

I don’t doubt that the majority of players are solo. The problem is, they created a team based game. If solo players are the majority of your population and your game is team based, solve that problem. Don’t punish people who play as a team by giving a solo group a kind of “we need help because we’re solo” type of advantage in the match making algo. All you’re doing is giving solo players incentive to never work as a team and communicate. They shouldn’t be rewarded for playing badly.

Just speaking for myself, but very closely balanced games are my ideal, whether in a team or solo. Winning 99:1 wouldn't be a reward for me, in fact I'd actually be very disappointed if I could hardly ever find competitive games while being in a party. So that is a viewpoint to be considered as well.

Marine - Bronze

This is so painfully obvious, I can’t figure out why someone as smart as Menke is overlooking the obvious. Take 4 randoms with coms and put them against a to4 with the same rank and see if it’s still 99:1.

I think your over reacting on this. Ive read a few of your posts here and you have to understand that solo players are the foundation to Halo. Its been that way since dirt was on this planet. Lets just see how this plays out.

I don’t doubt that the majority of players are solo. The problem is, they created a team based game. If solo players are the majority of your population and your game is team based, solve that problem. Don’t punish people who play as a team by giving a solo group a kind of “we need help because we’re solo” type of advantage in the match making algo. All you’re doing is giving solo players incentive to never work as a team and communicate. They shouldn’t be rewarded for playing badly.

Just speaking for myself, but very closely balanced games are my ideal, whether in a team or solo. Winning 99:1 wouldn't be a reward for me, in fact I'd actually be very disappointed if I could hardly ever find competitive games while being in a party. So that is a viewpoint to be considered as well.

I think most people who are into to Max cap teams, be it 2/4/812 are in this category.

Marine - Onyx

This is so painfully obvious, I can’t figure out why someone as smart as Menke is overlooking the obvious. Take 4 randoms with coms and put them against a to4 with the same rank and see if it’s still 99:1.

I think your over reacting on this. Ive read a few of your posts here and you have to understand that solo players are the foundation to Halo. Its been that way since dirt was on this planet. Lets just see how this plays out.

I don’t doubt that the majority of players are solo. The problem is, they created a team based game. If solo players are the majority of your population and your game is team based, solve that problem. Don’t punish people who play as a team by giving a solo group a kind of “we need help because we’re solo” type of advantage in the match making algo. All you’re doing is giving solo players incentive to never work as a team and communicate. They shouldn’t be rewarded for playing badly.

Just speaking for myself, but very closely balanced games are my ideal, whether in a team or solo. Winning 99:1 wouldn't be a reward for me, in fact I'd actually be very disappointed if I could hardly ever find competitive games while being in a party. So that is a viewpoint to be considered as well.

I think most people who are into to Max cap teams, be it 2/4/812 are in this category.

I mean WZ and WZA are just kinda funny in this sense. To have the most balanced games possible in general, you need a team cap of 6-8 in most cases since the biggest teams also tend to be the best players, so you can't just let them match the majority of the average skill population playing solo. BUT it's also possible for two 12-man teams to have amazing competitive games that are super fun for everyone, so it's ideal to allow for that possibility. It's also possible for an average-skill To12 to have a competitive fun game against higher-skill solo players, so you ideally want to allow for that match-up as well.

In theory you can get the best of both worlds. Many folks can play in 12-man fireteams, but the very best players can't find matches like that unless there are other top teams searching.

One prediction though... Clearly some very high skill players are going to deliberately tank their MMRs (either on their main account or smurf account), and then team up with high-skill friends in a To12, so they can have a lower team MMR to find matches, then stomp people. It would be nice if those tactics could be detected... but I'm not super optimistic about that.

Marine - Bronze

This is so painfully obvious, I can’t figure out why someone as smart as Menke is overlooking the obvious. Take 4 randoms with coms and put them against a to4 with the same rank and see if it’s still 99:1.

I think your over reacting on this. Ive read a few of your posts here and you have to understand that solo players are the foundation to Halo. Its been that way since dirt was on this planet. Lets just see how this plays out.

I don’t doubt that the majority of players are solo. The problem is, they created a team based game. If solo players are the majority of your population and your game is team based, solve that problem. Don’t punish people who play as a team by giving a solo group a kind of “we need help because we’re solo” type of advantage in the match making algo. All you’re doing is giving solo players incentive to never work as a team and communicate. They shouldn’t be rewarded for playing badly.

Just speaking for myself, but very closely balanced games are my ideal, whether in a team or solo. Winning 99:1 wouldn't be a reward for me, in fact I'd actually be very disappointed if I could hardly ever find competitive games while being in a party. So that is a viewpoint to be considered as well.

I think most people who are into to Max cap teams, be it 2/4/812 are in this category.

I mean WZ and WZA are just kinda funny in this sense. To have the most balanced games possible in general, you need a team cap of 6-8 in most cases since the biggest teams also tend to be the best players, so you can't just let them match the majority of the average skill population playing solo. BUT it's also possible for two 12-man teams to have amazing competitive games that are super fun for everyone, so it's ideal to allow for that possibility. It's also possible for an average-skill To12 to have a competitive fun game against higher-skill solo players, so you ideally want to allow for that match-up as well.

In theory you can get the best of both worlds. Many folks can play in 12-man fireteams, but the very best players can't find matches like that unless there are other top teams searching.

One prediction though... Clearly some very high skill players are going to deliberately tank their MMRs (either on their main account or smurf account), and then team up with high-skill friends in a To12, so they can have a lower team MMR to find matches, then stomp people. It would be nice if those tactics could be detected... but I'm not super optimistic about that.

The one hinderence to smurfing in WZ is a lack of reqs. I team of smurfs couldn't triple banshee ultra spam

side note. I hope the flipity flip spam of banshees is patched asap...or remove their shields and remove the flip canceling lock on attempts.

Spartan - Silver

Is avoiding full parties in Focused searching back down to 40 seconds or is it still 300 or 240 seconds? Just wondering cause it felt like I matched a full party somewhat quickly last night in a game from the beginning.

Marine - Gold

I still believe you could leave both playlist the same and just bring back Warlords with no MMR matching. I really don't think a game with a low population will work out with party matching & skill matching. I think Warlords was fine to be honest it just needed the blocking system turned off at the time "which it is now" and you could always just release it Friday through Sunday each weekend, I think everyone would be pleased. You could have it like this..WarlordsWarlords AssaultAnd basically just rotate these back and forth an not to mention just having it on weekend gives people something to look forwards towards on Halo 5 & people will not get burnt out on playing it. Worth a shot right?

Recruit - Gold

This is so painfully obvious, I can’t figure out why someone as smart as Menke is overlooking the obvious. Take 4 randoms with coms and put them against a to4 with the same rank and see if it’s still 99:1.

I think your over reacting on this. Ive read a few of your posts here and you have to understand that solo players are the foundation to Halo. Its been that way since dirt was on this planet. Lets just see how this plays out.

I don’t doubt that the majority of players are solo. The problem is, they created a team based game. If solo players are the majority of your population and your game is team based, solve that problem. Don’t punish people who play as a team by giving a solo group a kind of “we need help because we’re solo” type of advantage in the match making algo. All you’re doing is giving solo players incentive to never work as a team and communicate. They shouldn’t be rewarded for playing badly.

Just speaking for myself, but very closely balanced games are my ideal, whether in a team or solo. Winning 99:1 wouldn't be a reward for me, in fact I'd actually be very disappointed if I could hardly ever find competitive games while being in a party. So that is a viewpoint to be considered as well.

I think most people who are into to Max cap teams, be it 2/4/812 are in this category.

I mean WZ and WZA are just kinda funny in this sense. To have the most balanced games possible in general, you need a team cap of 6-8 in most cases since the biggest teams also tend to be the best players, so you can't just let them match the majority of the average skill population playing solo. BUT it's also possible for two 12-man teams to have amazing competitive games that are super fun for everyone, so it's ideal to allow for that possibility. It's also possible for an average-skill To12 to have a competitive fun game against higher-skill solo players, so you ideally want to allow for that match-up as well.

In theory you can get the best of both worlds. Many folks can play in 12-man fireteams, but the very best players can't find matches like that unless there are other top teams searching.

One prediction though... Clearly some very high skill players are going to deliberately tank their MMRs (either on their main account or smurf account), and then team up with high-skill friends in a To12, so they can have a lower team MMR to find matches, then stomp people. It would be nice if those tactics could be detected... but I'm not super optimistic about that.

The one hinderence to smurfing in WZ is a lack of reqs. I team of smurfs couldn't triple banshee ultra spam

side note. I hope the flipity flip spam of banshees is patched asap...or remove their shields and remove the flip canceling lock on attempts.

Recruit - Bronze

Here's an great example of someone using a smurf and manipulating his MMR by DNFing the majority of the matches he plays just before the game ends so he can spoof the matching engine and troll the playlists. While he holds an overall 2.8 KD, he tracks only 12 wins in 66 matches and shows a high CSR of bronze 6. He was in a BTB I played and went 45 and 2 and quit in the last minutes or two of the game. Now looking at the history, for sure he'll be getting time bans, but this is probably one of many smurfs the guy flops between to work around those controls. I get how hard it is to set the machine to sniff this kinda stuff out because these guys go to a lot of effort to game the logic models, but please tell me the changes you're working on with matchmaking are also designed to stamp out more of this kind of toxicity from the community.

Spartan - Silver

You should probably remove the link or just PM it to Josh since that's not allowed. The Social banning seems to be pretty lenient going off of that unless there was a way to bypass it, but I agree that numerous accounts are a problem.

Recruit - Gold

These MM changes got to go. While the quality of the matches has gone up, the quantity has gone down to the point where I get stuck in "Unable to match" hell. I usually play during off peak hours (0100-0800 PST) and before these changes I was able to find games consistently. Now if I want to find games I need to use an alt. It is upsetting how quickly I can find a game with an alt. Leave blocking off and discard the changes that has caused many players to stop playing Halo. Not everyone can sit down and play during the peak hours.

Recruit - Gold

One other suggestion - I think this basically already happens, but it would be good if selecting "expanded" search would allow you to match players and teams of more varied MMR, meaning you'd tolerate matches against significantly better or significantly worse players and/or teams, but only if those other players can't find better matches elsewhere! That way if you're searching in a To12, you have the best possible chance of matching another To12 searching at that time. Otherwise it seems possible for 2 teams (with somewhat different MMRs) to TRY to match each other, but still both fail to find any game at all, because their MMRs are too far apart.

On the other hand, if moderate-skill players want to avoid matches with blowout potential, they just search focused or balanced and the MM will be tighter, though they may wait a lot longer.

But it just seems so silly that I solo-search a social playlist like WZA on "expanded" and can't find games at all...

Isn't that the whole point of the "expanded" option? To allow players to be matched the way they want? Sanitize, perfect, sanitize some more, rinse and repeat. Matchmaking would be better if we had the freedom to play the way we want. I'm all for fair matches, but if I have to wait 5 minutes to play one game in the name of "fair" matches, I'm not going to play nearly as much.

343 Industries

@ZaedynFelHere's an great example of someone using a smurf and manipulating his MMR by DNFing the majority of the matches he plays just before the game ends so he can spoof the matching engine and troll the playlists. While he holds an overall 2.8 KD, he tracks only 12 wins in 66 matches and shows a high CSR of bronze 6. He was in a BTB I played and went 45 and 2 and quit in the last minutes or two of the game. Now looking at the history, for sure he'll be getting time bans, but this is probably one of many smurfs the guy flops between to work around those controls. I get how hard it is to set the machine to sniff this kinda stuff out because these guys go to a lot of effort to game the logic models, but please tell me the changes you're working on with matchmaking are also designed to stamp out more of this kind of toxicity from the community.

Yeah, we are aware of these. This type of behavior is glaringly obvious in the new system we are testing, but it'll be awhile before we take action with it. We need to first integrate the system, which is aways off, and after that, add new systems that choose an action for this behavior.

We could ban for it, though that probably just leads to more alts. Or we could silently fix the MMR, which would lead to it just feeling ineffective, which is probably better.

Recruit - Gold

Let’s talk about this new matching algo for to4 in arena. Doesn’t it undermine the gold, plat, diamond, etc ranking system? If you assume a to4 diamond can play more like onyx’s and because of that, a to4 diamonds has to play against 4 random onyx’s, they are going to get smoked.

this new system probably works decent for the silver vs gold level of players but a to4 low level onyx players will get stomped by 4 random champs.

Last season whenever I played solo and played against a to4 of onyx or high onyx-high diamond mix, I'd get paired with another champ and 2 onyx's or even a high diamond and we'd smoke them. This happened frequently and it made playing solo easier than playing with a full squad at low champ level because I'd get very strong teammates. Whenever I played with a team, usually consisting of champs and mid-high onyx, we'd frequently match with top 25 champs who are usually a to4 and they'd slaughter us like lamb 9 out of 10 times even though my teams chemistry was very strong. I definitely won more often playing solo because I didn't have to face those top tier champs so often.

Spartan - Silver

This is what I'm talking about with JIP needing to be fixed.

This game ended while I was about to join it from the searching lobby which means the game was most likely already in the 90's for the winning team's score when I was joining. Then I was stuck in an extended black screen while it looked for another game.Link

This game only had around 40 seconds left when I joined and then it went into overtime. Why am I joining a game with so little time left?Link